 |  | Can I appoint friends or family as my trustees? | | | Settlors have the freedom to choose their trustees. You can appoint trusted friends or family members as trustees and still have the benefits of professional trust administration through the Guardian Trust Monitoring and FlexiTrust Services.
Guardian Trust can offer your trustees:
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| | I don’t want to lose control of my assets. | | | Whilst you may no longer own and control trust assets personally, a number of steps can be taken to reduce loss of control and maintain a degree of influence over the trust.
As the settlor, you can hold the power to appoint additional trustees as well as remove trustees. You can also appoint yourself a trustee of the trust. In both roles, as settlor and trustee, you can maintain a level of influence over the trust property. As the settlor, you may also give the trustees a Letter of Wishes which sets out how you would like the trustees to exercise their discretionary powers, particularly with regard to beneficiaries and income and capital distributions. Your Letter of Wishes can be reviewed annually. Guardian Trust's Flexi and Monitoring Trust services, are specifically designed for settlors who wish to be trustees, but who also want the benefit of professional trust management support. |
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| | I have been told that you need to have at least 3 trustees for a trust. Is this correct? | | | There are no rules about how many trustees you need. Guardian Trust is the sole trustee of many trusts. You can have 1, 2, 3 trustees or more. The only rule is that if you start off with 2 or more trustees the trust must always have at least 2 (or one trustee corporation).
Remember, trustees are normally required to act unanimously. This means all the trustees must be involved in all decisions and sign all documents. Failure to do so may put the trust at risk. Too many trustees, might slow down processes and potentially add to the cost of getting things done. So, more than 3 trustees is usually not practical, especially if they live some distance apart. On the other hand, too few trustees can also create problems. Being the sole trustee of your trust as well as the main person to benefit during your lifetime, might raise the question, "is this really a trust at all?". The risk is that you may still be regarded legally as the owner of the assets thus the trust would be deemed a sham. So the choices are: a) Have an independent person to act with you as co-trustee – but you must treat them as a real trustee and involve them in every decision; or b) appoint a trustee company such as Guardian Trust who will have an unbiased approach and ensure that the trust deed is followed; or c) act as trustee by yourself (in the case of a couple, you may be the only 2 trustees) but in that case a much higher standard of record and account keeping is required in order to demonstrate that this is really a trust and the assets are not treated as if they were your own property. |
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| | I’m concerned that my family’s assets will be tied up by a document that won’t allow for changes when they’re needed. | | | The modern discretionary trust is one of the safest and most flexible methods of ownership. At the discretion of the trustees, within the parameters of the Trust Deed, beneficiaries can be changed - new beneficiaries can be included and others excluded from the trust benefits. With a discretionary trust, there is also no fixed entitlement for beneficiaries. The value and frequency of the benefits can also be changed by the trustees. The discretionary trust also allows for:
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| | Can I withdraw the funds set aside in my Funeral Trust? | | | Funds set aside in a Funeral Trust cannot be withdrawn during your lifetime. The reason for this is that these funds are excluded from your total assets by Work and Income New Zealand when they assess your eligibility for a rest home subsidy. In order to protect the funds from this asset testing it is necessary that the funds cannot be withdrawn. |
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| | Isn’t it better to do this through a funeral director? | | | Whilst funeral directors offer this service, there is always a business risk that the funeral director may not be able to provide the funeral service when required to do so. With a Guardian Trust Funeral Trust you can rely on our continued existence and, as a statutory trust company, Guardian Trust will act with the highest level of integrity and professionalism. |
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| | How is my money invested? | | | The funds are invested in the Guardian Cash Fund, an award winning cash management account which gives investors access to a wide range of short-term money market investments. |
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| | What happens if there is money left over in the Trust after paying my Funeral costs? | | | Funds that are surplus after the payment of funeral costs are paid to your executor and will form part of your estate to be distributed to your beneficiaries. |
